Joseph watches as Leslie moves into the bathroom, her hand clutching something flat against her side. Hopefully, she has no intention of ever being a spy. She is not cut out for sneaking. He wonders what she has found that has her wanting to be secretive. Maybe money. Maybe someone left a joint up on top of the soda machine.
Despite going to the same schools for years, he doesn’t know Leslie. Not really. Not even enough to say hi to her in passing. He can’t figure out why she was being so familiar, or why she said rude things. Maybe she was close to Izzie. A lot of girls say mean things about each other but call it friendship. For that matter, a lot of his teammates do it too. It has never made sense to him. It's unlikely it will start making sense now.
Joseph wants to ask Izzie about it. But, since she came back from the bathroom, her face has been pale and her hands have a distinct tremor. So he swallows his words. She sits near Sasha’s head, her back against the cabinet under the sink, and presses her hands between her knees. The running water seems to have been forgotten.
Joseph stands up to turn it off. The noise stops, and it is silent.
He looks around at the others in the room, but nobody returns his gaze. The adults are sitting in chairs near the center of the room, staring at the floor. Leslie is stepping out of the bathroom, ignoring them all. Sasha is breathing heavily, but she is trying to prop her head up on her arm to get it off the floor, so he is not as worried as he could be. She is concerned enough with the comfort of her head that she will likely not be passing out any time soon. And Logan…
Joseph rolls his shoulders to loosen them and asks Sasha if she needs water. Sweat is beading on her forehead, but she isn’t overheating. Without any stronger painkillers, all he can think of offering is water. There were only a few unopened bottles in the fridge, but they could wash out the opened ones on the door and fill them with tap water. It would be awful to survive whatever was happening just to come down with something thanks to drinking from someone else’s opened bottle. Staying hydrated may not be the least of their problems, but it was at least one they didn’t have to worry about.
The cabinet faces are cold against his bare shoulders as he slides down next to Izzie. No, he admonishes himself, too close. He shifts over a few inches. It doesn’t help. He can feel his heart beginning to race anyway. He clears his throat and tries to be calm. “Do you think Logan has gone into shock? Or is that only a breathing thing?”
“Psychological shock is a ‘thing’ too,” Izzie replies, swaying her knees slightly to the sides. “I’m worried about him, but I don’t know anything about helping someone through that. What if trying to shake him out of it makes it worse?”
“Mm.” Joseph crosses his arms over his chest and stretches his legs out in front. He doesn’t know either. When his dad died, his mom retreated for a while, but she didn’t shut down. She got up in the mornings, helped him get ready for school, and then got herself ready for work. The light was gone, and it was like she was running on autopilot, but she still functioned. Logan wasn’t functioning. It had only been an hour and a half since he and Izzie pulled him into the room. Almost the entirety of that was spent with the other boy lying on his side like a discarded doll. He was breathing, and blinking, but when they tried to talk to him it was as though they were talking to the sky. “He’ll have to eat or go to the, I mean, you know, go relieve himself at some point, right?”
He stumbles through the words, and he can feel her looking at him quizzically. Joseph doesn’t know why he can’t talk about taking a piss in front of her. Or maybe he does. Everything is so messed up, and his brain is churning through thoughts too quickly. It doesn’t help that Izzie is so close.
They stop talking, and Joseph closes his eyes. In retrospect, he should have gotten up and pulled out that pile of brown napkins when he was trying to help Sasha. They are useless when drying hands, but they could have absorbed blood if he used enough. Now his shirt is sitting in the sink, wet, and he is feeling the chill.
They will all be feeling the chill soon. The emergency lights are obviously hooked up to some kind of backup generator, but it looks like psychotic Rusty didn’t hook the furnace up to it too. The room has gotten progressively colder over the hour. More bodies means more body heat helping to warm up their little nook, but it won’t be pleasant. Hopefully, someone will arrive soon and help them. He squeezes his arms against his chest tighter. It would be a good idea to stand up and wash out his shirt. Even if it is stained, once it dries some it will be warmer than his undershirt. Maybe in a minute, he tells himself.
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The day started off crappy. His mom was waiting at the dining room table with a handful of pamphlets for in-state colleges with good civil engineering programs. Ever since he mentioned he wanted to be an engineer she has been so excited. He knows that she has misunderstood him, but he can’t get himself to clarify it.
Everything she does is either for him or the tribe, and she wants the best for both. That is why she came back after going to college and then law school. As their lawyer, she can help the tribe to negotiate with the state and federal government to make sure they don’t get screwed over any more than they have in the past. Her days are full, working from her little office room next to Chief Revoir’s in the converted split-level house that serves as the tribal office building. He loves how their council works out of something that was once a house and not a boring square building. His mother loves it too. She says it is another indicator that they are all home and family. She loves working from there.
She assumes that Joseph will want to do the same. Joseph does love his mother, and he loves the land he grew up in, but he wants something else with his life. He wants the stars.
But, no. He can’t talk to her about it. She will be disappointed that he wants to spend his life out with the white man, chasing their silly dreams that take them beyond the trees around them, the earth under their feet. And then, when she realizes how he came up with the idea, she will just be sad.
He looks to his side, to check on Sasha he tells himself. Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is heavy but steady. At the edge of his vision, he can see Izzie has closed her eyes as well. He takes a moment to study her face while she can’t see him. For years, hers has been the only smile that has affected him. The way her eyes turn up a little at the ends. Those same eyes are tight now. She is scared, and after her initial panic, she has been trying to exude calm. But she is still scared, and he wishes he could fix it.
Obviously, staying away from her hasn’t been enough. He scoffs inwardly, turning his face back toward the center of the room. There is too much he wants to do. It wouldn’t be fair to date someone knowing they wouldn’t make it past high school, nor would it be fair to try and get someone to follow him around after he leaves. Then again, following someone around did work out for his dad. If he was here, he would tell Joseph he is being silly to not chase after love. Now more than ever, with death around them, he should embrace life.
Joseph misses him.
“Do you think there are more outside?”
Izzie is still rocking gently back and forth. Her voice is strong and clear, even if her eyes are now open and she is staring across the room. Joseph tries to follow her line of sight to see what she is staring at, but there is nothing on that small strip of wall across from them.
“Of course, there are more outside.” Leslie rolls her eyes as she turns away from the snack machine she was examining. “Do you think a half dozen of them just popped into existence outside the doors to the store and decided to concentrate all of their attention inside of a tractor supply store?”
“Well, they popped into existence somewhere,” Joseph interjects. “Hunters crawl all over the woods around here, someone would have seen them before, wouldn’t they have?”
“Maybe.” Leslie shoots him an appraising look. “It would depend on how large their pack is. A small pack could hide much easier than a large one.”
“They could be new to the area as well. A small group that is migrating from somewhere else.” The sideways sway of her knees stops, and Izzie sits up straighter. “Like mountain lions.”
“Oh, please, mountain lions don’t migrate.” With a snort, Leslie rights a chair and pulls it over to sit against the outside wall.
“No, not in the way birds do. But they do drift from established areas. There hasn’t been a breeding population in Wisconsin for over a hundred years. Yet there are more and more sightings confirmed every year. They are traveling from other areas. Maybe these things are as well.”
Joseph watches Izzie as she becomes more animated. “So, what, these things are new to the area?”
“I don’t know. But, like you said, nobody has ever seen them around here before. They had to come from somewhere.”
For the first time since they entered the break room, she is radiating something besides fear. Joseph feels something melting inside, and a little of his worry fades. He watches as her gaze turns inwards, and she chews on her lower lip, just like she does any time she is pondering some big problem. He has no intention of interrupting her thoughts. If anyone can figure out how they can get away if help doesn’t arrive, it will be her.
“Oh, how interesting!” Leslie laughs dryly, crossing her right leg over her left and bouncing her foot. “Please, do share. When reading the colorful fact bubbles about cougars in Teen Vogue, did you happen to see anything about blind and deaf animals traveling long distances?
Shoulders that were just relaxing tense up again. Joseph stares at Leslie in disbelief. ‘Has she always been so rude?’ He asks himself, staring at her incredulously. She doesn’t react to him at all. Leaning her head back against the wall, she closes her eyes and slides her hands between the backs of her thighs and the hard plastic of her chair. ‘She’s got to be scared. We all act differently when scared.’
“What do you mean? Why would you think they are blind and deaf? How could you know?” Izzie finally looks at Leslie, but the other girl doesn’t return her gaze.
“Because,” Leslie responds, voice dismissive and dry enough it would catch fire if there were a spark. “They have no eyes or ears. They hunt by sensing body heat.”
She doesn’t respond to any more questions, and Izzie quickly stops asking them. As if she knows the other girl was just trying to show she knew more and was not trying to help. Joseph shakes his head and turns back to face the girl by his side. She doesn’t seem surprised that the class valedictorian isn’t interested in helping. He doesn’t understand what Leslie is saying, or how she could know it to be fact, but he trusts that if Izzie believes her then it must be true.
But there still isn’t an answer to the questions of whether there are more of the things outside, or how nobody has seen them before. Joseph shakes his head again and gets up to wash out his shirt some. Nobody else speaks as he uses hand soap to scrub at the fabric and watches as the red water flows down the drain.